Miss  Find  Catch
by Garmonbozia
Summary: One near-miss, one rare find and one really nice save.  You try keeping their anniversaries in order and tell me it's not this difficult.
1. Miss Me, by The Doctor

There is a well-known controversy surrounding, in a very narrow way, the question of who invented the telephone. Now, obviously, what with you all being human and wonderful learning creatures with the ability to archive and compile failures until they become sudden and perfect successes, it was something a cumulative effort. It starts, for instance, with the first bright spark to tie two paper cups together with string, rattles its way on along through electricity and telegraph and other related technologies and all their inventors. It is only after a long lot of messing about and haphazard, slap-dash attempts that Elisha Grey and Alex Bell got to lock horns over it.

It has never occurred me until just now that I could go back and settle all that. Have a look, see who got to the patent office first, so on, so forth. Settle that. Put the whole thing to rest. Know which one to take back with me and strand on some hellish salt-mining moon where the first taste of the air peels your lips off like sticky tape.

I don't like telephones. Not even my own. _Especially_ not my own, and certainly not when it's ringing when all I want is a cup of tea. Every time, I end up having the same conversation with myself. I should answer it. But then it might not be important and the person on the other end will still expect me to get involved and spend time and effort on it, because I answered the phone. And if don't answer it, and it _is_ important, they'll call back anyway. But then again if it's really super-mega-life-or-death important, they might not be able to call me back, or anybody back, ever, and that would be horrible, only I probably wouldn't know, but that's not the point, but what you don't know can't-

By which point the telephone has stopped ringing like the good little thing it is, and I'm off to make a cup of tea. Wonderful things, telephones. Connecting an entire planet, all the thousands of disparate cultures, all that intraversible space traversed.

Intraversible-_as-yet , _I should say. You're a bright bunch, you'll get there. That's nice, that makes me smile, almost out of the console room, when it rings again.

What did we say about if they rang back? That it's important but there's no immediate physical danger, so I could probably go and make my tea and then dial 1471 and everything would be oh to hell with it…

"Hello?"

"_You_." A low, vicious growl. One of those calls I shouldn't have answered. Typical, just typical.

"Sorry, who is this?"

"I've just had my daughter on the phone in tears because of your complete and utter uselessness and I want you back here, because I have scissors, and if she won't divorce you I'll do it for her and-" Pond, apparently. Doesn't sound like Pond. Sounds like some really angry evil Pond twin. She's been going on, by the way, while I formulate that thought and live with the image of it and wish I'd never thought of it. "-mess up one of the _big_ ones, it will not be my scissors that are waiting for you, it'll be a hammer, because that seems to be the only way I'm ever going to get anything through your _thick skull_!" A pause, while she takes several deep, Mummy Bear breaths. "Hello?"

"Hello."

"I swear to God, if you lecture me on manners right now…"

"Wouldn't dream of it. Thanks for slowing down, though, much obliged."

"You are running dangerously close to missing your own wedding anniversary."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, it's not until New Year's Eve!" Well, no. Technically it's no time at all, having never really technically officially happened in a time line that still exists. And technically it's all the time, having happened in a time in which all things were at once and existence was total, but that was turning out a bit time-consuming, and a bit costly in terms of presents, so we settled for New Year's Eve. Which is, as I tell Pond, still two days away.

"No it's not, it's in about two minutes, and she says you haven't even called to say you're coming or not."

She's clearly wrong. Nonetheless, constantly placating her even in her absence, I check the monitor.

"Ah…"

"'Ah'?" she echoes dully, "What's 'Ah', what does 'Ah' mean?"

"Just a general exclamation, really, usually kept in the lower rangers, below the more explosive 'Oh'…" She tells me not to be smart and I explain that, somewhere in the depths of last night I decided to go and commiserate Pluto on no longer being a planet.

"And what difference does that make?"

"You know how when you go, say, to America, the time changes, to keep everything right."

"Yeah."

"Well, when you fly between planets with longer or shorter days, you lose or gain in a similar fashion. Hence I'm showing the 29th and you're showing-"

"Just gone the 31st."

"Call her back, tell her I'm on my way."

Hang up, off to get dressed, and try and count how many we've had by now, and find out what the present for that is, and figure out something to _do_ because, with all of time and space at one's feet, the wife gets high expectations, don't you know…

Again, I get as far as the doorway.

And the phone rings.

This time, I don't even think about it. Ninety-nine-point-extra percent likely to be River, wondering who I've been on the phone with the last five minutes, where the hell I am, and I can comfort her myself. I'll explain about Pluto, she'll understand…

Actually, scratch that; I'll probably leave out the part about me nearly missing our anniversary because I forgot to change my clocks.

"_Darling_," I begin.

And Pond comes back again, "Don't you 'darling' me, you-" And proceeds to string together words I shan't record here. For the sake of the children. "_Why can't you get something right for once in your life_?"

I won't lie to you; that hurts. I do lots of things right. Not always first time, mind you, but I get there. I get there in the end.

"Pond, I haven't _left_ yet."

"Are you still in my garden? Are you still in my garden, you – Rory! Hand me that frying pan!"

"Amy, when are you calling from?"

"Oh, yeah, like I'm going to fall for that. You just ran out my back door faster than a greased pig after-"

"…Ah." I cover the receiver and ask the Tardis, via the console, if she's behind this trickery. A minor temporal shift, rerouting this second phone call from some later spot in time to now, when I need it, when it's actually useful. No reply. The guilty-child technique. "Amy, I need you to think back, very carefully, over everything that was said, everything that River, I imagine, sobbed into your shoulder. And if you care about her, you will tell it all to me, in a series of simple, easy-to-follow bullet points, alright?"


	2. Find Me, by River Song

I tell myself he's late because he's organizing something so wonderful there'll be nothing to do next year but pity him, trying to upstage it.

I tell myself that's probably wishful thinking.

Midnight. The midnight before the midnight that changes the calendar. That's when he picks me up, that's how we _do_ it, this is _usual_. And yet here I am, half-past-twelve, an edge seat on a ninth-floor balcony café. Very nice, very private. Custom designed to host champagne for two, not coffee for one. All of Jong Mapur hives below me, a throbbing heart of a city, a thousand neons beating together, forever. Somewhere, a police siren, and it makes me smile. Never could remember if we really robbed that casino. Might have dreamed that part. Yeah. Last year was wild.

This is how it works, you see. Every year we meet where we parted. It's how we know where to go. Somewhere in our timelines is this single daisy chain of impossible nights, once-in-a-lifetime after once-in-a-lifetime, one right after the other like the chase-lights on every Jong Mapur street sign. Theoretically, anyway.

Twelve-forty-five, by the way. I mentioned, didn't I, that he's late.

It's not that I don't understand. He gets into the middle of things sometimes, things where forty-five minutes could be a dreadfully precious amount of time to lose. But the trouble is, he gets into the middle of things where forty-five minutes could be a dreadfully precious amount of time to lose, and so when he isn't here and I am, that weighs heavily on me. Sometimes I snap at him when he does show up. It's very rarely because I'm angry.

Under the table, my phone rings. I fish it out of my fine silk clutch. A present, actually, from him. The twelfth anniversary is silk. I wanted to bring the kimono too, but there wasn't time or room. For later, I mean; it's nothing I could wear around town. If there is a later

"Hello?"

"Look, I know I'm a bit late, but that's no cause to go running off, now-"

"Where are you?"

"_La Fée Verte_, like last year, like _always_."

"You're in Montmartre?"

"…Why, where are you?"

Oh, great. Wonderful. This is an _excellent_ omen for things to come. "Jong Mapur," I tell him.

"On Higgins Second?"

"Do you know of another?"

"No, it's just that… when I am, Higgins Second is probably still a cooling ball of dust and gas. Rapidly cooling, I'll grant you, but from a very great temperature."

Oh, he's miles out. He's light years out. There's this old and slightly rusty voice in the back of my mind muttering how we could always still just kill him. I put that to bed, tell him to hang up and I'll send him a time reference.

A moment later and there he stands. It doesn't mean he rushed, it just means he got the co-ordinates exactly right, once in his life. Wonder how long he stood around Montmartre checking and double-checking the maths. No, I'm not taken in by his promptness, not one bit. Nor by the fact that he brought the Tardis right to that point. It has attracted a certain amount of attention, and the private little corner where we might have started our little celebration suddenly doesn't seem so private anymore.

He sees me looking, casts his eyes about, and at least holds the door open for me. "Shall we?" As I pass him, he tosses something over onto the table. The balance of the bill, I assume. Least he can bloody well do.

Now that he's here, he's doing better; the bottle is on ice and the cork is popped. One hand already working the console, the other hands me a glass and goes back for the bottle.

"Well alright, but just the one for now." Because if he's doing better, I might as well give him a chance. "You're not getting me nearly so drunk as I was last year."

I'm horrified to see his scant little brow furrow up together. "Were you?"

Which either means he was the same way and we _did_ rob that casino, or that there's something going very very wrong here.

My _pearls_.

I'm supposed to get _pearls_ this year.

If something is going wrong and the something is what I suspect it to be, I'm not getting _pearls_. Which is fine. I'm not materialistic. And today is not about the gift, of course it's not. It's just, with my colouring, and especially if they were set in gold, ooh, yes, pearls in gold, it would just be… lovely.

Oh, to hell with selfless and honourable, I want pearls. God knows I've earned it. Put up with him all these years. That's what the anniversary presents are for, that's why it works its way up from paper and wood to diamonds and gold, because you _earn _it.

Now. How to ask him which year he thinks this is without sounding like a gold-digger. Specifically, a pearl-diver.

"How did you end up in Montmartre?"

"I believe it began with you wanting to grant Kurt Cobain a last wish and pretending to be an angel and it ended somewhere after we got kicked out of the Crazy Horse."

Honestly, _one_ thing, _one_ thing I ask him to keep straight, and he gets it wrong. He's _miles_ behind. The longer I know him the less reliable he gets. I have no _idea_ where he is, but it's a long time ago.

He's looking at me now, just scared enough to keep his big stupid face from going entirely blank. "What? What is it, what's the matter?"

I put the full champagne flute in his hand and fill another for myself. Smile and clink mine to his. "Nothing, sweetie, nothing at all."

But may God have mercy on your soul if you serve up oysters.

If the year was right, he'd have done himself proud.

For one, he's managed the single most exclusive venue in the history of the universe. He says he jumped back to before anybody knew it was here and made the reservation fifteen years in advance, unwittingly setting the trend that led it to become the single most exclusive venue in the history of the universe. Quantum physics, it seems, isn't a problem for him, but the social ripple effect? Complete mystery.

Not for hayfever sufferers, the Flower House of Atalanta's Limit is exactly how it sounds, and more than could ever be imagined. I know for a fact that reading that summons in your mind tacky images of fairytale bowers, or Victorian botanical gardens, or some godawful combination of the two. I know because I used to think the same way. We couldn't have been more wrong between us.

Imagine, if you can, the average detached house. Only the Flower House is _alive_. Wherever you might lean, it blooms, and everything you touch is like velvet, or silk. And the vines of the walls serve the drinks and ease back the chairs that unfurl a thousand leaves from the base and back until you don't even feel like you're sitting at all, not even hovering, just _being_. Just existing at that particular little bit of space. You are indoors and outdoors, part of this world and it part of you.

The smell. I'm sorry. I can do no more to describe it that to say it.

But my mind, all this time, is racing, thinking, "Flowers is Fourth."

And we had a fourth. Not here but in the ice fields of Calexifor, where the air itself freezes and gathers up on itself in an enormous forest of frost. The blooms melt at a touch, cry from your fingers as water and hit the ground as diamonds. One of the most beautiful things I've ever lived. We've _done_ four, _done_ flowers. He was late for that too. Showed up late and drenched and wouldn't tell me where he'd come from…

So something, here, has gone very, very wrong.

This isn't just me being selfish anymore. If he thinks we're doing four what happened to the last one?

The most exclusive venue in the history of the world, vines serving caviar blinis from their own leaves, bearing drinks about on great glossy orchids, and I can't concentrate because _time_ might be broken.

Someday we'll look back on this and laugh.

Given, it might be _yesterday_, but…

* * *

><p>[What next for our haphazard heroes? Will River ever just get to have a good time? Will the Doctor ever get to just <em>sit down<em> for five minutes? Find out tomorrow (maybe yesterday), same Tardis time (well, roughly), same Tardis channel (only do channel-hop if you can't find us straight off.)]

((For PrincessAndula, by the way, the sweetheart. Hugs from Sal.))


	3. Catch Me, by The Other Doctor

"Late. Late. _Really_ bloody late."

It's not helping. I thought saying it out loud might help, but it's not helping. I'm late, as the white fluffy gent once said, for a very important date. And she's going to kill me with a hammer, or maybe chase me down the neon streets of Jong Mapur with a revolver and shoot me through a snowy window like in that film she likes. The revolver would have a mother-of-pearl handle, and when she had killed me she would cast it away from her and spit after it, but that's not going to happen, really. It's good. It's all good, I'm ready for this.

Before I leap dynamically from the Tardis, I remove my top hat, shut my eyes against the horrors I am about to perpetrate, and quickly run the flame of a lighter once along the brim. As I then perform the aforementioned dynamic leap, it's still smoking, smouldering.

"Sorry, darling, just saving the world, again, well, a couple of worlds, actually, all at once, won't bore you with the story, let's go do the Lindy, I've found _officially_ the greatest New Year's party, River? River?"

At the table I left her at last year, there is nobody.

Empty chair, yes, and a cold half-cup of coffee, but no _body_. It should be there, all fluffy at the top and curvy down the middle, and the little bottom bit probably tapping as she tosses up in her head between the simple hammer and the more dramatic revolver chase scene. But it's not there.

Nothing there but the chair and the coffee.

Oh, and the envelope, blue envelope, very important, by the colour of it.

Oh, God, this is it. This is it.

Contents to go something like this; 'Thirty years and you stand me up. Go to hell and take your hat with you. Not lots of love anymore, River'. Or words to that effect, only they'll be all scathing and Rivery and I'll have to go and grovel for forty-days-and-forty-nights.

I pick it up, tentatively, much in the manner that one would a bomb, and slice it open with the end of the coffee spoon. It doesn't explode. And it doesn't kill me either. It's not even from River.

'Dear Me,' it says, "It's only me. Afraid we've made rather a hash of this one, but we got bullet points from Pond and we can fix this. Timing is crucial. You need to be in the ocean at the base of the cliffs, east side of the main landmass, Atalanta's Limit. The time reference and more specific coordinates are in the P.S., but _be specific_. It has to be 04:30, New Year's Eve. Bring the present. Don't bring the Tardis, she mustn't see you. Further instructions to follow at that point. Please hurry – River is resigned, but Pond becomes impossible to live with.

Sincerely, You.

P.S. Your hat's on fire.'

And beneath that, he has, or rather I have, included the appropriate temporal coordinates.

And my hat's on fire. I shake it off and kick it away from me. It rolls, topples between the bars of the balcony balustrade and tumbles flaming into the night below, into a revelling crowd who cheer its descent with the riot-mentality of pack animals. Brutes all of them. But there it goes. There goes my hat, into the baying mob. There it goes, and I haven't even clapped eyes on her, yet.

Bloody typical.

I need to be in the ocean off the main landmass at Atalanta's Limit. Well that's all well and good, and easy for me to say, but he had a parking spot booked. I can't land within ten minutes of those cliffs. It's New Year's Eve on one of the most exclusive planets in any system; people have had this booked for years. The great and good and stupidly lucky of a hundred races have gathered to see in the New Year at sunrise on the very edge of their galaxy, and I'm trying to put a Tardis down in the middle of it. The final solution involves the astute use of the artificial gravity system to delicately rearrange what may or may not turn out to be the convoy of the Grand Provost of Hesperides.

But I'll burn that particular bridge when it comes back to haunt me.

Even at that, it takes a good half-hour to slide my way through this crowd, a stunning percentage of whom appear to know me and _even at that_, the security on those cliffs is frankly mind boggling.

Apparently New Year's Eve is the night people like to jump and not come back up. Supposed to be a good spot for it.

Only trouble is, it's 04.28. And over the ridge behind me there's a familiar little buzz, a little hum, that makes me check and be sure the sonic is in my pocket. A _very_ familiar voice shouting, "Back, vile flora! So help me I will _drown _you in Weedol, you'll wish you'd never been seeded!"

A security drone, about the size of a football and the colour of the average lump of coal, hovers at shoulder level. It is the single least comforting thing I have ever seen. I look it up and down and its red lens eye follows mine. It can sense what I'm contemplating and says, "Readings indicate you are the last of a species. Suicide would therefore technically be consistent with genocide."

"Tried that before, didn't like it. Made me feel all icky inside."

"Records show you still have so much to live for."

"Thank you, Drone. I'm glad you have records of my future. It indicates to me that oh-four-two-nine, thirty-one-twelve, I gave you a good sonicing and jumped off that cliff."

At which I give it a good sonicing, take a run at it and try and leap clear of shallow patches and pointy rocks and other things that kill you if you fall on them. No way to control that, really, so basically I just jump and close my eyes.

And hit water. Feet first, plummeting torpedo-like, then slowing down, and popping back up at the surface alive and unscathed. One of the Drone's little friends sweeps down to inform me that rescue will be with me soon. It mentions a trained counsellor and I grab it down under the water. It fuses, sparks and dies.

A great number of Drones, however, have gathered on the spot just above where I just jumped from. A collective effort, it seems, to stop a madman in his tracks. They too receive a good sonicing like their former compatriot, and drop around me like cannonballs ready to stove my head in. I curl up under the water again until they've all landed.

Lift my head just in time to hear myself cry out a nice, loud, self-comforting 'Geronimo' as I leap off.

Well, stumble off. I'm carrying River.

I, by the way, am not responsible for whatever monstrosity of an anniversary I've just put her through, _I_ am. Or, was… Will be. Bloody grammar, I can _do_ it until there's two of me, oh God, I should be getting out of their way, shouldn't I?

I dive again. My wife and I crash in a bundle not inches from my nose, a bomb of waves and white bubbles. I spot me, and give me the thumbs up. Or point me towards the surface, not sure which, but since all three of us are at risk of drowning, this seems prudent.

No sooner have I drawn breath than I shout out, "Swim! It's still coming! Here, take her legs!"

We drag River between us, me and I, out of the way. The last thing to come over the cliff is what would appear to be an enormous Venus fly-trap, crawling along on its roots and leaves. It senses the cliff edge too late and wobbles there, trying to move back again, but its enormous flower head unbalances it.

It falls like Goliath. The first wave is enough to push us into the base of the cliff, to the low rocks where we are beached. Then, on contact with salt water, it writhes, and until it dies all conversation is impossible. I sit with myself and my unconscious wife, with nothing to do but watch and be repeatedly drenched by the splash from its flailing leaves.

This ends.

Time passes.

The sea settles somewhat again. The dead, slightly withered killer flower floats there.

"So…" I say.

"Yeah," I say back to me.

"Thanks for covering for me at Jong Mapur."

"Did you bring the present?" I take it from my pocket, shocked it hasn't been lost in all the diving, and hand it to me. "Then you're perfectly welcome. By the way, you couldn't nip back and do the fourth anniversary."

"Certainly. What's the fourth?"

"Flowers. And, you see that first idea that just popped into your head? Just… Just leave that one for now. Flower House turned out to be a bit of a nightmare, actually; all the food's-"

"Poisoned, and the house eats people."

"Oh, please don't tell me I already knew all that."

"_You_ didn't, but you will by the time you get to pearls." I try and ignore the distant look on my face as I wonder how the hell we ever make it as far as pearls. It's an expression that knows better than to take simple hope from the fact, knows that for that to happen there will more than likely have to be sacrifices. "So where do I pick her up for the fourth? Long time ago."

"Montmartre."

"Oh… _oh_…" I laugh first. Eventually he follows suit. One of us, I or me, says something about it being a pity we didn't take Courtney with us, and we're both laughing like fools when the suicide squad arrives to talk us out of it.

"It's alright," I say, next to me, "We were just defeating an evil alien flower. Don't worry about this one, she's only unconscious."

I sling an arm around my shoulders and pull me close. "We're twins. This is our wife. That's alright where we come from." Both of me giggle until we shake, and I turn to shush me, lest we should waken River. She can't see me, here. That would be both the fourth and the thirtieth completely ruined, dog houses, un-put-uppable-with Ponds, cold shoulders, no fun. No fun at all.

We let the baffled paramedics take us back to the other me's Tardis, and I decline the offer of coffee and blankets and dry clothes. Not because I'm already warm and dry, far from it, but because he's got her. He, not I. Different people. Anyway, I'm probably late for Montmartre already. I let them go. The paramedics are giving me a lift back to my own transport.

He jumps back out the door as soon as it closes. "Wait! What's in the present? What did I get her? Just so I don't look surprised."

"Remember Wallis Simpson? Wallis 'Take them, dah-ling, I'll never be old enough for pearls' Simpson?"

"I'm _regifting_? For an anniversary?"

"_I'm_ not the one that nearly got her eaten by a giant flower. Anyway, it's not a regift, it's an heirloom, from one of the most glamorous women ever to live, a symbol of love's strength overcoming all obstacles, a woman for whom great sacrifices were made, on whose personal devotions the crises of a nation were hung like so many pointless little cobwebs!"

He stares me, and shakes his head, slowly smiling.

"Oh, I'm good."

"Handsome, too."

"Oh, I am _so_ good."

"Not if you don't get that antivenin into her sometime soon."

A cry, a flapping of arms, and he disappears again. He'll do well. She'll like it. All the fun of it, the sweet, innocent fun of days past. She'll like seeing him again. And me, I get to go back to the start and see her when everything was still new and wonderful. Pretend to do all that again.

And why can't it be? Why can't it be beautiful, be _fun_? We're still standing. And for all the changing we've done, _we_ haven't changed. _Us_, the unit, the collective, that hasn't changed. That's enough, isn't it?

I asked her when we were trying to pick a date what the point of this was. The very idea of fixing something to a certain _day_, when it could be New Year's Eve every eve for a year if we weren't careful, just seemed ridiculous.

But this is it.

This is what we're celebrating, isn't it? Doctors swapping Rivers, Rivers swapping Doctors for all we know, and none of it mattering. Whatever's behind us and whatever's yet to come and none of it mattering. Still the same, still us, still standing. Still strong. This is it.

Calexifor. The Frost Forests will be in full bloom, this time of year.

[I know it was just a quickie, folks, but I'll be back to the series and full episodes next week (if you'll have me). Anybody interested keep an eye out for a preview. Hugs for all, in light of all the 'shameless fluff' this week,

Sal.]


End file.
